The Same Stars Elsewhere
by R Amythest
Summary: The tactician departs shortly after the victory at Caelin. Tactician/Lyn like you least expect.


In a private room of Castle Caelin, a marvel of Lycian stonework, adorned with bold tapestries of Roland, the new heir sat across from her guest at a slender marble table. In her native tongue she said, "Florina will be staying in our service. And Wil. He wants to be sworn in as a Knight of Caelin. The others will be staying a few days for the celebrations before returning home... except for Matthew, as you know."

"He seems to have tasks to attend to," came the reply, a brusque alto in the same language with a hint of an Eastern accent. "As do I."

Lyn's mouth parted in surprise and hurt. She expected that she might have meant more to her closest companion of the last few months. Pressing her lips back together, masking her disappointment, she asked, "When should I ask them to prepare a mount?"

"Mm... it would be best for me in two days' time."

So her tactician would be leaving even before the celebrations began in earnest. Lyn glanced softly over the robust figure sitting rigidly upon the cushioned chair. _So soon? Will you not stay for me?_ she wanted to ask, but she couldn't bring herself to. Maluqa would tell her if she was meant to know.

Maluqa withdrew a small bag from that ever-present green Bernese cape and opened it to take two dried leaves, offering one to Lyn. "Forgive me. I'm being ungenerous."

Lyn shook her head and accepted the offering, replying, "It is generous of you to spare what little qat you have left so far away from home." Outwardly, she remained polite, a good host. As she fingered the dried oblong leaf she wondered at a furious pace what it was she might have done to alienate someone who had been so dear to her. They placed the leaves into their mouths in mutual silence, its raw sourness pricking at Lyn's mouth as she chewed.

The mood-lifting spirits of the leaf did not yet affect her by the time Maluqa spoke again. "I did not expect to receive a vision here in this place, when I have been so unfaithful to the spirits of my people."

"You are one blessed with visions?"

"Of course. That too is the domain of the nádleehé."

Lyn focused on chewing. She had gleaned the meaning of that when asked her tactician why the others' address of "Mark" – a male Lycian name, she knew – was acceptable, dignified in any way, and Maluqa looked upon her with stoic Sacaen humor and said in brief explanation, "Even the southerners know I am not woman alone."

That was the truth, in a fashion. Lyn suspected that they sensed her unfeminine demeanor and drew comfort from the derision of an ill-fitting name. They claimed, of course, that _Mark _was simply easier on their tongues, which might have been true as well. Whatever the case, it was not understanding – and Maluqa knew that too.

"Should I care for the contempt of those blind to humanity?" she said, a venomous gleam to her eyes; Lyn never heard her speak with such disdain of any other matter, with the exception of the Djute. "You may as well learn to ride from their ass-backwards horsemen. They are in no position to judge what is right."

With pride quashing hesitation, Lyn said, "The Lorca did not have the ... nádleehé among them, either."

Maluqa looked at her with such pity and said, "Mother Earth blesses few of our people, it is true." Lyn could not say what her people believed of those who would not call themselves man or woman (for it would be a grave insult), bit her lip and quashed her pride and thought that at moments like that, the Lycians might have been better company, even though she usually felt more comfortable with Maluqa and her familiar customs. That was how Maluqa was and how she was proud of her own people, may Father Sky spare you in disagreement.

Now, savoring a leaf together in this strangely ornate southern castle, Lyn concealed her ignorance with silence. She let Maluqa believe that the silence was meant to give her leave to speak again and recount her vision.

"Before me were my people," Maluqa said, not chewing, "as they were some time ago." Before the famine, she meant – before their neighbors denied them aid for two years as they withered, snatched their survivors and forced them to live as the Djute. They were the Miurgrel, people of Hanon, and they would live in their own way – so Maluqa shouted for all to hear. She headed for Bern before she would bow to the Djute chief who would not recognize her, but the rest were cowards and stayed. Maluqa told her that story only once, well after Lyn told her of the Taliver and the Lorca, and that was when they first shared more than the comfort of being two Sacaens in a very southern band of fighters.

"Near our settlement was a single birch tree. I climbed it. By the time I reached the top it was night – perhaps. The earth was flat and lost in darkness. I looked down beneath me, at the roots of the tree, and I saw that I was atop the sacred hoop of the world." Maluqa paused. For her vision to bear the hoop, the cycle of lives and ages, the turn of events in stages like the seasons, revolving around the eternal timelessness of the present – Lyn breathed carefully; what little doubt she had for Miurgrel prophecy vanished in the moment. "At once I saw the stars. They appeared at once in the sky in the shapes of horses and people, opossums and antelopes. Not as the Kutolah read spirits from them, nor as the Etrurians draw lines and call them beings. They were images crafted by Father Sky in divine likeliness of his children, and they flew south. As they flew, their feet dashing against the sky, they moved the hoop of the world beneath them, and night turned darker still.

"Fires were all about me. People wearing armor of the south fought each other, and the wind whirled and carried their screams across the world. The stars had vanished. The only light was flame.

"Then a single star appeared above me. I understood and came down from the tree. The fires vanished and the stars returned to their places in an earthly starry night. A Voice said, 'Behold this day, for it is yours to make.' By the stars' light, I saw the world at peace. To the south, to the west, and to the north, the countries of the outsiders were calm. To the east, I saw the pointed homes of my people."

Lyn's eyes regained focus and pulled her away from the world of visions, back to the stout figure across the table, the woman-bodied Sacaen with her dark eyes and a man's head of sun-lightened earth-green hair, who now – eyes turned downward, thoughts scattered – chewed at her leaf and swallowed once, more slowly than it took to swallow spit.

Maluqa said, "As they were some time ago."

It was not reverence that compelled Lyn to give half a minute's quiet. Maluqa swallowed another time, fixing a vase with a steady hard-eyed stare. At last, Lyn said, "As the spirits that watch over us guide you beyond Caelin, I cannot object."

She could not object despite the way they had spent the last few months of their lives, now whirling through her mind like dancers, like the figures in the stars of prophecy:

The collapsed figure she had found when she had been on her own for so many months. That first fight and the hours after, when they spoke of themselves like strangers. Maluqa, learned of Bernese strategy. Journeying back to the outside world from a trip to her homeland to see if her people had yet regained themselves; left in disappointment. In stubborn anger, pushed herself too hard under the hot sun.

The months on the road with the Caelin knights. Maluqa humored Lyn but let her know in small indiscretions what she thought of her subservience, the way she let them praise Madelyn and forget Hassar, accept her genuine half in compromise for the half they desired. Once, Lyn had sharply replied, "They would die for me nonetheless. Should I ignore all of their loyalty because they unknowingly slight my people?"

"No. I wonder why you chose to follow them to Caelin." She had not yet confronted Maluqa for turning to Bern herself. Sometimes Lyn watched her blend in with the crowd, green cloak hiding her, and thought about how boldly she spoke for someone who herself chose to live among foreigners. Likely Maluqa knew why Lyn followed the Lycians: because she felt that one person was not enough company, not even with all the spirits of her people said to live on in the land of her birth.

Yet despite leaving for the Lycians' company, on the road she often kept to Maluqa's presence. She was comfortable with the length of her pauses, her blunt personality that was yet so tactful, her faint air of wisdom. That was why Lyn talked to Maluqa the most out of all of them, and that in turn was how, on an otherwise uneventful night in the long march between Khathelet and Caelin, they found themselves alone together on a walk some distance from camp late at night, their campfire a star in the distance.

That night, under an almost-full moon large in the sky, Lyn cursed everything, that she had no people, that she had agreed to take part in this foolish war, that she had to kill not the odd bandit or other tribesman in some minor skirmish but soldiers upon soldiers upon child-soldiers. "I don't even want the throne!" she shouted, more loudly than was wise so far from camp, with only herself with her sword and her tactician. "I only came for my grandfather!" Her grandfather, as if he were a man she knew. He was the last of her family; they would be unconditionally close for that.

After the appropriate pause, Maluqa said with a low voice, "To abate your loneliness?"

"I don't know. I don't know!"

"I, I am right here," she said, with one motion unclasping her cloak that claimed her for Bern's Scholars' Guild and throwing it over the brittle grasses. Underneath she wore a faded and patched deel, subdued zigzags running along its rim. It was the dark tan of a man's deel, and for a moment Lyn saw a man before her. Then Maluqa shifted and her chest produced odd shadows and highlights in the moonlight and Lyn shivered.

"Perhaps we shouldn't," Lyn said.

Maluqa tilted her head as if Lyn had just proposed a particularly interesting activity. "Perhaps."

But Lyn still remembered the taste of apple in the wetness of a sweet Ilian girl's mouth, her disappointment when their experiment ended with her shy stammer of, "Th-that was odd," and Lyn quashed her hammering heart and replied, "Is it? – Oh, we shouldn't leave the basket on the ground. The bugs will get to it."

Their friendship went unchanged, but she knew from then why it was that she seemed apathetic to the exchange of affections when she was amongst the members of her tribe. Here, at night in a distant field, the ghosts of the Lorca watching her move, Lyn hesitated.

"It is little different from unleashing your wildness against a swordsman," Maluqa remarked dryly. Lyn was glad for the night, hiding both her awkwardness and her almost guilty knowledge that it was that difference she wanted. "Do you know how to fight those battles?"

Lyn looked to the starry night, pleaded with the dead not to judge her, and threw her belts and sashes on the ground beside the cloak. "I haven't a clue," she breathed, shrugging her shoulders back to let her blue deel fall to pool around her feet.

In hindsight, it had not been a particularly tender or loving night spent atop a ragged cape that didn't quite shield them from the prickly dried grasses of late summer. If Lyn were to put it to words, which she never did, she might have called it frantic. It might have been meandering but that Maluqa knew what she was doing, as always, on every battlefield, from some inestimable collection of the experience of her years.

All of that, so many months and firsts laid at Maluqa's feet, and now she would be leaving. Lyn could not tell if it was the leaf's spirits that brought turbulence to her blood, or if it was something else. Suspecting that she might be too forward, too demanding, she said nonetheless, "I'll miss you."

Maluqa did not say, "You seemed satisfied to take the Lycians to be your company," or "When we made love you still seemed unsure," or "Things could easily have been different." She did not bring focus to the conflicts between them, not then, not as they spoke of their parting – that would be a bad omen for any future together. Instead she said, "We will meet again."

"Yes," Lyn said, the euphoria of qat blunting her doubts. "We will meet again."

A few moments passed, and then Maluqa said, "And by then you would better know how you wish to live and with whom, yes?"

Lyn couldn't help her eyebrows from quirking in surprise as Maluqa looked at her directly without rescinding her too-blunt words. Was it just another one of Maluqa's assumptions – or did she know what thoughts perturbed her all along as she blazed a path to Castle Caelin? Lyn thought for a moment that she was held in the gaze of her tribe's elder and shaman, leaving her bare against the world.

"After the stars fade and return," Lyn said reverently, as if she already knew.

"On that starry night. We shall part for now, heir to Caelin."

* * *

><p>Notes:<p>

With thanks to Asherien for the challenge, and for a cultural look-over. Thanks to in rain for general betaing.

The _q_ in _Maluqa_ is known in linguistics as a _voiceless uvular stop_ and you can look this up on wikipedia if you'd like to hear it for yourself. To a native English speaker, it is almost indistinguishable from the _k_ sound. It is produced much like _k_, but with the tongue making contact further back in the mouth. The _l_ is meant to be a _voiced retroflex flap_ and is identical to Japanese _r_.(You can also hear this on Wikipedia.) Vowels are as they usually are on an a-i-e-o-u system and m is what you think it is. Long story short, it sounds a lot like Mark to the uninitiated.

"Behold this day, for it is yours to make" does not belong to me, but the copyright has been expired for decades. It came in one of Black Elk's visions.

If you're confused, I recommend looking up "nádleehé" on wikipedia.

I love all feedback. I like to know that people read what I write.


End file.
